Mediterranean Health Interview Surveys Studies: long term exposure to air pollution and health surveillance
Acronimo
MEDHISS
Sommario
MED-HISS project aims at contributing to the updating and development of European Union environmental policy and legislation, in term of adverse health effect of air pollution.
Descrizione
MED-HISS project aims at contributing to the updating and development of European Union environmental policy and legislation, in term of adverse health effect of air pollution. The current understanding of the association between long-term exposure to air pollution and adverse health effectis based on cohort studies from USA, Canada, Japan, China. Few studies have been conducted so far in Europe, with restrictions on age of cohort recruited, pollutant studied, and with poor geographical variability. We would obtain biased results for European Health Impact Assessment (HIA) by using risks from northern American cohorts, exposed to different particulate chemical composition as well as characterised by different population characteristics. MED-HISS is a demonstration project, and involves four European countries (Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia), in order to guarantee to the EU a source of information for HIA based on direct measurements. The aim is to assess the feasibility of the adopted approach in other European countries to create a European cohort database of individual characteristic and air pollution data exposure useful also for future studies on other environmental issues, with a specific attention to exposure assessment. MED-HISS aims to contribute to consolidate the knowledge base for the development, assessment, monitoring and evaluation of environmental policy and legislation, by setting up a European surveillance system of long term effects of air pollution based on retrospective cohorts recruited using National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data already available. Cohorts will followed-up for mortality and morbidity, and to each subject will be assigned the exposure to air pollution (PM10, PM2.5, NOx, NO2, O3), derived from national dispersion models. This cohorts are representative of all populations and areas of residence (urban, rural, metropolitan) and long term effect will be evaluated for a wide range of diseases.